“From the One, all things arise, yet the One remains in its own unity.”
Life and Thought
Plotinus was a great philosopher of antiquity and the founder of the Neoplatonic school, which expanded Plato’s ideas through mystical and metaphysical elements. His most important work, the Enneads, is a collection of philosophical treatises on the First Principle, the soul, intellect, and the soul’s return to the divine source.
Plotinus (Plotinus) was a Greek-speaking philosopher of the third century CE and the most important figure of Neoplatonism. He was born around 204 CE in Egypt and, after studying philosophy in Alexandria, especially under Ammonius Saccas, he taught and interpreted Plato’s philosophy. Later, he went to Rome, where he established a philosophical school that became one of the important centers of philosophical thought in the ancient world.
Plotinus’s most important work is a collection of his treatises, which were compiled by his student Porphyry and published under the title Enneads. This work discusses the structure of being, the relationship between the One, Intellect, and Soul, and the path of the soul’s ascent.
Plotinus’s central idea is based on the concept of the One, the single source of being; a reality beyond existence and description from which all levels of reality originate. From the One, Intellect (Nous) and then Soul emerge, while the sensible world occupies the lowest level of this hierarchy of being. He also emphasized the experience of the soul’s return and union with the One, and this view had a significant influence on Christian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, and theoretical mysticism.